


The Things You Leave Behind

by ironmessTM



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: AU, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Cancer, Everyone Needs A Hug, Gen, I tried enjoy, I'm going to hell for this aren't I, I'm not a doctor, Irondad, No actual dying but a terminal diagnosis, The diagnosis is fairly detailed but, They all need a hug let's be real here, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, What Have I Done, ironfam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-19 06:07:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20204980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ironmessTM/pseuds/ironmessTM
Summary: Okay so I've got five works in progress that I've been procrastinating varying amounts and I wrote this in two days instead. Bear with me here, the Muse does as it pleases.Essentially, this is a oneshot wherein the ironfam has to deal with a diagnosis of cancer. Bring on the angst...hI don't go into any actual treatment processes (though who knows maybe I'll feel like doing something like that in the future) even though I do talk in fair detail about the specifics of the medical condition itself, which is why this is rated G. I felt that could've rated this teen if I chose to do so, but I didn't want to give off the impression that there was anything dark here. I keep it very PG, don't worry; it's really only the detail of the diagnosis. Take care of yourselves if that's a concern, but otherwise, there's nothing to be wary of.Thank you so much; I hope you enjoy, and please let me know what you think!





	The Things You Leave Behind

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to preface this by saying that while I did a bit of research for the diagnosis, I am by no means a doctor, so this isn't fully accurate. Furthermore, I chose to pursue a diagnosis of lymphatic cancer, and while for the sake of literary interests I made it terminal, lymphoma is actually very treatable and fairly often curable. People can live with it for many many years, and even make a full recovery under forgiving circumstances. I essentially threw together the ultimate worst-case-possible scenario of lymphoma I could based on a culmination of everything lymphoma can actually do in people, and then fast-tracked it a little bit as well.
> 
> I would encourage you to do your own research on the matter if it interests you, and not to take my word for any medicinal science discussed here.
> 
> Also, as much as I love Morgan and love the Ironfam of four, I wanted this to be a bit more mainly about Tony, Pepper and Peter. I felt like if Morgan were involved, she would steal the spotlight and in a way hinder the extent of how much I could explore the others' emotional processing, and that wasn't really the direction the Muse was pointing me in.
> 
> Now, without further ado...here we go, Satan. Enjoy!

Tony quietly walked through the entrance of the lab, greeted by the familiar smells of engineering at work and the equally familiar sight of Peter hunched over his desk with his back to the entryway. The older man leaned against the doorframe, savoring the precious moments wherein the boy’s exuberant energy and sheer brilliance were focused, his spontaneity directed towards the creation of something new. It was in these moments that he saw Peter not just as the beautiful, bright child he knew him to be and selfishly hoped he could stay forever, but as something more than that. In Peter’s seemingly boundless potential for good, Tony saw the future; one he looked forward to, although still wished would wait longer to come about than it seemed it was going to. Peter's head lifted after a moment and partially turned to the side, his eyes visibly lighting up as his gaze settled on the smiling man by the door. "Mister Stark!" He exclaimed, grinning widely and putting down the disassembled webshooters he'd been working on before rushing across the space to greet his mentor. The young boy quickly pulled him into a delighted hug, and Tony flinched ever so slightly before sinking into his touch. 

"Hey, kid." he said, his voice hinted with a poignant fondness as he maneuvered one hand to loosely card through the back of Peter's curls. He tried to memorize every line of Peter’s face, to drink in every detail of this; this kid, this light, this moment. It was slowly starting to sink in, the realization that these seconds, these were seconds he needed to savor, to hold onto as strongly as possible. Peter tensed, drawing back with his hands still behind Tony's shoulders as his expression quickly morphed into one of concern.

"Mister Stark? I-Is something wrong?" he asked. Tony sighed, taking in Peter's innocent features with a long look before resigning himself to say what he knew he had to say next. There was no avoiding it; he needed to stare it in the face, to be brave. For Peter. 

"I...” he exhaled, giving in and stalling one last time before forcing himself to continue with a sigh. “Look, kid…I’m not going to beat around the bush with this one, okay? You’re...you're going to want to sit down for this, Peter." Peter's demeanor only became more riddled with worry, knowing that Tony almost never called him by his first name. “Peter” was a name reserved for dark, impending times; times when Tony couldn't bring himself to shield the young boy from the harsh reality they were about to face, when things were dire enough that he needed Peter to have his back. This wasn’t good. He could feel it. Their eyes met, amber against amber, life against life. 

Or what was left of one, anyway.

***

Earlier that day, Tony had sat in the oncologist's office next to Pepper, his hands loosely gripping her slender fingers when at last the doctor walked through the door and took a seat behind her desk. 

Over the past several months, he’d started to have headaches, back pain, shortness of breath, and found himself experiencing other assorted symptoms that had begun developing in the span of who knows how long. At first, he’d thought he was just getting old, and accepted his fate both begrudgingly and with a smile. Peter had taken many opportunities in the past to joke about his age, and so he’d known that this kind of thing was coming – even if it did turn out to have come around a bit earlier than he’d thought it would. But then he’d started having persistent on-again-off-again fevers, swelling on the sides of his neck, and pain in his mouth and gums. The symptoms escalated and multiplied, and F.R.I.D.A.Y. alerted Pepper, who’d immediately had Banner check him out. Bruce said he’d had a few vague theories as to what could be wrong, but referred him to a young oncologist to do more specific tests than he could, just to be safe. Now, they were about to get the results from Tony’s evaluations, and Pepper had been silently praying to whoever could listen in the aching hope that everything would be okay.

Tony couldn't seem to look the doctor in the eyes, but forced himself to do so, for Pepper's sake if for no one else. He wasn't scared of what the woman’s expression would tell him, but somehow...that wasn’t true. The thing was, he wasn't scared for himself. 

This was a different kind of fear. 

Tony wasn’t particularly afraid of kicking the bucket, to put it bluntly (as he often would). He’d come close to death on more occasions than any one man ever should, and over time, as a result of this, he’d had more than enough opportunities to come to a delicate sort of peace with the idea. What he was scared for, it wasn’t dying. 

It was everything and everyone he’d be leaving behind in doing so.

He was scared for the love of his life whom he’d never deserved, holding her breath and clutching his hand like she was too afraid of what it would mean if she let go. He was scared for the kid, the kid who'd made his way into his life and shown him how to be a better person, a better version of himself as seen through a lens of innocence and light. He was scared for his friends and his family and all the people who relied on him to be there for them; all the people he knew he couldn’t bear to let down, and all the people he knew would do their best to support him anyway. "Mister Stark?” she said, clearing her throat and drawing his attention away from his thoughts. “We've...come to a diagnosis."

"Why don't I like the way you're saying that?" Tony said with a quirk in his mouth, trying and characteristically failing to lighten the mood.

"I'm sorry to say this, I truly am, but..." she took a brief inhale, pausing and biting her lip before regaining her composure. "You appear to be suffering from stage IV lymphatic cancer." 

"But that's...that's treatable, right?" Pepper asks breathlessly, tightening her grip on Tony's fingers. "Lymphoma is curable, very curable." 

"Normally, yes...but in this case, the lymphoma has led to severe neutropenia, which means that Mister Stark's-" 

"Tony. Tony is good." Tony interrupted, gently stroking the inside of Pepper's wrist where he could feel her heart rate elevating. The doctor nodded solemnly, correcting herself. 

"Which means that _Tony's,_ bone marrow; it no longer contains enough neutrophils - white blood cells - in it, which puts him at high risk for neutropenic sepsis, in the form of a severe infection due to your now reduced immunity." She paused, continuing hesitantly. "Given how low his neutrophil count is, the infection risk is…very, very critical. It seems that the cancer has also begun to spread to his lungs, at rates we cannot quite predict. Normally, there are treatments we could prescribe, such as growth factors, immunotherapy and certain chemotherapy-derived medicines, or even a bone marrow transplant, but in this case...his condition is simply too high risk for them to bear much fruit. We'd essentially be delaying the inevitable, and even then…not by much. The side effects and procedural recovery wouldn't be much of a tradeoff, either; none of the resources we would typically turn to are options I can honestly recommend. I'm sorry, Ms. Potts.” She looked at Pepper sadly, dropping the thin professional façade before continuing in a quiet tone of voice and prompting Tony to brace himself for what he realized he knew was coming next. He felt his heart beating in his ears, picking up volume as though it was a morbid kind of drum roll.

_Ba-boom._

“All things considered, we...”

_Ba-boom._

“we don't think he has long."

Boom.

"H...how long?" Pepper whispered, the words subdued and her eyes red-rimmed with moisture and settling shock. 

"It…it could be days, weeks. Perhaps a month, if you're lucky."

Pepper let out a choked sob, looking at Tony as tears began to trail down her cheeks. 

"Oh, Tony." She gasped, burying her face in his shoulder, a shuddering breath just barely hidden in the quiver of her back.

"It's okay, Pep." Tony murmured, moving his arm behind her neck and rubbing his thumb soothingly at the base of her skull. "Everything'll be just fine." Tony proceeded to talk briefly with the doctor about short-term treatment options, handling the situation with a surprising amount of grace and composure, and Pepper thanked her with a quick nod before Tony shook her hand and the two got up to leave. They rode back to the compound in silence, Pepper processing soundlessly and Tony doing his best to let her do so uninterrupted. He drove with one hand on the steering wheel and reassuringly clasped Pepper's with the other, comfortingly stroking her knuckles and praying with all his heart that he could find a way to make this easy on her. After pulling in and leading Pepper out of the car, Tony was mildly relieved when the heavy quiet now seeping into his view was broken by an alert from F.R.I.D.A.Y. 

“Boss? Peter Parker used his clearance to enter the compound thirty minutes ago. He is currently waiting for you in the lab. Shall I notify him of your arrival?”

“No, I’ll let him know myself. Thanks, Friday.” He turned to Pepper, and gently pressed a kiss to the crown of her head. “We’ll figure this out.” He murmured, holding the curve of her cheek lovingly in his palm. 

“What are you going to tell Peter?” Pepper asked gently, the affectionate moment’s reprieve short-lived in the face of brutal truth. Tony opened his mouth, but felt something sink in his stomach as he found himself at a loss for words.

“I…I gotta…I gotta tell him the truth, I guess. I mean, there’s no point in hiding it, not if…” he trailed off, exhaling a sharp sigh and unable to finish the sentence. Pepper simply nodded, her smile thin and almost achingly sympathetic as they began to ascend the stairs.

“I’ll leave you to it.”

And that’s how Tony got here, about to wipe the hopeful innocence from this beautiful, perfect kid’s face. It wasn’t a secret how much he’d come to love Peter, that in many ways he’d become something like a father to the boy. He’d just hoped that there would never be a reason for it to hurt so much, to hurt either of them at all.

“Mister Stark?” Peter asked, sitting down on the sofa facing Tony, who had positioned himself next to the boy. “I-I don’t– what’s wrong? Di-did aliens attack, or did something get hacked, or–“

“Kid, you gotta give me a break here. No, no aliens, no hacking…nothing like that.”

“Then…then what is it?” Peter whispered, his eyes brimming with concern and fear.

“I…” Tony exhaled, running a hand through the front of his hair. Why was saying the words so difficult? He leaned forward, sighing and taking Peter’s hand loosely in his own. He knew that the kid was always comforted by physical contact, and felt a prickle of relief when Peter’s tense muscles relaxed and eased into his touch. “I’m sorry, Peter.” Tony said quietly, unsure of what else he could tell the boy that was more honest, more close in resemblance to what he was really thinking on the inside. Emotional honesty, vulnerability, people in the past had called it. Now he understood it, the importance of stripping down your walls and being as achingly honest as you could with someone else. He truly was sorry; sorry that he had to do this to the kid, sorry that he couldn’t fix it, and sorry that he wouldn’t be there to help him get through it like he’d done to his best to be with everything else.

“Sorry…sorry for what?” Peter replied in the same tone of voice, feeling the bubbling emotions coming off the older man but with no idea as to what was the cause of it.

“I’m…I’m dying.” He finally blurted, forcing the brusque words out through the lump in his throat with a wince. It took a moment for what he was saying to register, but he saw it in Peter’s widened irises the very second it did; the second Peter’s face fell, and Tony’s heart sank right along with it.

“You…you can’t be…” Peter stammered, his features descending into shock. “You’re…you’re _Tony Stark._ You’re _Iron Man,_ you’re– you’re practically my _dad._” Something in Tony’s chest tightened, his heart twisting at the realization that this was one of the first times Peter had ever referred to him as his father. Tears began to trail down Peter’s cheeks, his eyes red and rich with disbelief. “Wha– how– how long do you have? Wha-wha-what even _is_ it?” Peter asked, his voice shaking and his hands trembling in Tony’s grasp.

“It’s cancer, Peter. Stage IV lymphatic cancer, and some severe neutropenia to go along with it. It’s in my lymph nodes, my bone marrow, my lungs. I’m extremely high risk, for infection. I…I have days, maybe weeks, a-a _month,_ if I’m lucky.” He repeated the words the doctor had told him, and for the first time that day, Tony found his feelings unsteady, an unstable tremor running almost mercilessly beneath every syllable of the words as the grief-stricken rasp in his voice rang unfamiliarly within his ears. Peter let out a choked sob, falling against him and crying into his shoulder with heaving breaths.

“I can’t lose you.” he whispered through the tears. “I can’t lose you.”

“I know, buddy.” Tony murmured, holding Peter close. “I know.” They sat together in silence for the rest of the night, and as the lights dimmed and the world around them fell dark, Peter eventually drifted off to sleep nestled in Tony’s arms; cocooned within the blissfully blinding confines of a dream, in the space between reality and fantasy that promised him everything would be okay. If it were up to Tony, that’s where the boy would stay forever; safe and protected from everything the world would no doubt try to take away from him.

  


“Friday?” Tony whispered eventually, shifting his back slightly to make the kid’s weight more comfortable against his side. “Could you call Pepper down here? And ask her to be quiet, would you? Don’t turn on any of the lights.”

“On it, boss.” F.R.I.D.A.Y. responded quietly. After a brief spell of silence, Tony watching as the moonlight’s silky glow cast itself over them like a blanket of warmth and comfort, he heard the faint approaching click of heels, and turned his head to see Pepper gracefully tiptoe in.

“Tony?” She asked softly, looking down at the sleeping child curled up in his arms with a heartrending smile. Tony gently patted the space on the cushions next to him, moving just slightly to the side and motioning for Pepper to make herself comfortable. Her eyes were brimming with fondness as she slid onto the pillows, positioning herself against him so that their heads rested against one another’s shoulders.

“I love you so much, Pepper.” Tony murmured, tilting his neck to the side and looking up into her gorgeous irises with as much affection and gratitude as he could conceivably express. “So much. I never understood what I did to deserve you, but…I couldn’t do it without you.”

“I love you too, Tony.” she whispered back, a silent tear sliding down her cheek.

“We…we’ll figure this out, okay? We can get through it, _you,_ can get through it. I promise you, Pepper.”

***

“I promise.”

***


End file.
